First, he says that the four most-taught Shakespearean plays are all tragedies. The tragedies are â€” he says â€” about how men screw up the world. And in the four most-taught ones, the women generally kill themselves or are otherwise disempowered. We should be teaching the comedies, he says, because they’re about how women make the world livable.

We saw “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at Los Gatos Shakespeare last night, which is all about female empowerment. Which four tragedies was he referring to though? In the tragedies, everyone dies (to a first approximation).

Hamlet is certainly not good for Gertrude and Ophelia, but Hamlet, Claudius, Laertes, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern all die too.
Macbeth? Lady Macbeth is hardly disempowered, she’s a tragic figure too. Lear? Goneril and Regan have enough power to be tragic themselves.
Is Merchant of Venice a Comedy? Portia is in power throughout.

The four most-required tragedies (according to KC) are: Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar. (Romeo is first, but I don’t remember the order of the rest).

Sure, Lady Macbeth is empowered in the sense that a guy in a tower with a rifle is empowered. And she dies as a result. KC actually made a point of reminding us that ambition was not considered a virtue at the time, since being uppity disrupted the social order.

Yes, Merchant is a comedy. Hohoho. Tough to do a version that doesn’t offend modern sensibilities … but still easier to do than the Shrew.

?? I don’t think Lady McB is less tragic than Claudius. I was responding to your saying that Lady McB is _empowered_. She’s empowered in that she’s not passive, but she’s not empowered in a way any girl or boy should emulate or be inspired by.

there was a great book about women in Shakespeare by Linda Bamber(think that was her name) the basic premise was that in the comedies, women are the higher side of human nature– the opposite is true in the tragedies– and what that told us about not only Shakespeare’s view of women but his psyche